Founded in 2014 to explore “the most expansive possible view of documentary film,” the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Art of the Real has sustained its singular legacy as the premier North American showcase for international non-fiction and hybrid works. Since its inaugural edition, curators Dennis Lim and Rachael Rakes have shed light onto otherwise overlooked, boundary-pushing films that blend traditional conceptions of reality with formalistic and avant-garde processes for category-defying results. Observational documentaries and their familiar form always have their place, here alongside essayistic, lyrical tone poems and phenomenological, personal history lessons. Along with Acropolis Cinema, UCLA Film & Television Archive is proud to offer a West Coast home to a curated selection of these spectacular works from the past five years of Art of the Real, all of which are premiering in Los Angeles for the very first time. Screenings will start at the Archive’s home at the Billy Wilder Theater and continue at the Downtown Independent.

Special thanks to Dennis Lim and Rachael Rakes of Film Society Lincoln Center.

Funding for this series was generously provided by Tadashi Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities and UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies.